Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Lilly Philipps

"Look, she's leaving already!"

Lilly was considerably proud of herself for spotting it: the glimmer of recognition as Cleo glanced out the window, her eyebrows inching together, just for a split second, less than the time it takes to click your fingers. Her next observation was of the self-evident kind. Cleo was rubbing Clara's back, giving her a languid, one armed hug before walking out of the restaurant, leaving Clara behind her at the table, rubbing her own bare, white arms. Lilly did wonder what Clara had done with the pink blazer she'd lent her the night of the party but didn't bother mentioning it. It was a strain of comment that would get her a vehement side eye from Alice, especially in that moment. Her and Gemma, seemingly without realising, were getting closer and closer to the screen as Cleo walked round the side of the building and towards the forest that the carpark backed onto. She had stopped feet from the blanket of trees, looking at something or someone just off camera, hair flittering in the breeze, her body language evocative of Lilly's childhood labradoodle, Lady, every 5th November. Frozen by the fizzing fire in the night sky, its ears would prick up like a foxes, its eyes like a startled snowy owl's. Untucking one of her arms, which had been crossed to her shuddering chest protectively, Cleo used it to beckon the unseen person from the shadows. And they came. Domesticated, they were. Like Lady, when Lilly used to tell her to sit, shake, lie down. Cleo King did tend to have that effect on men. She'd be a fantastic dominatrix, Lilly thought. Only it wasn't a man that appeared, the black of the night rolling up off his face like the curtain rising at the theatre, signifying that the show's about to start, demanding silence. It was a boy.

And absolute silence their face got.

Gemma was the first to break it and she didn't hold back. She brought the hammer down on it, reducing it to smithereens, only the unsparing truth left behind.

"Shit." She said hoarsely, pausing the video. "Alice...That's your little brother."

His puckish features, his mess of hair, the sandy colour that couldn't be seen in the monochrome footage. It was irrefragably George Jenkins. Alice was mute, snatching the laptop back off Gemma like a toddler in a nursery taking back their favourite toy, their barbie, their cabbage patch kid, their action man. She had that same look of addled outrage as she dragged the cursor back, letting that same half second of the video where his face came into view play over and over again.

"That little shit." She said, sounding choked, her hand quivering as she continued doing it, pulling the cursor back, watching George step out of the shadows, walk towards Cleo, then letting it play on. The two of them, Cleo leading George by the upper arm like a refractory school child, disappearing into the forest, over and over again. "How could he...what...what is he..." Lilly had never seen Alice Jenkins so devoid of anything to say before.

She was dumbstruck, actually dumbstruck.

It felt like watching an actor fuck up their lines on live TV. It was Gemma who first reacted, pulling the laptop back towards herself and picking her phone up off the side, holding it to her ear, with that same look on her face that she got before a critical race. Alice was staring at her, mouth actually hanging open, an expression that looked as anomalous on her face as a look of deep contemplation did on Lilly's own.

"What the fuck-" Since that word only came up sparsely in Alice's day to day vocabulary, shit had to be getting serious, Lilly thought to herself, her feelings confirmed as Alice got to her feet, "-are you doing, Gemma? Are you calling the police? Because if you're going to turn in my little fucking brother it would be nice if you could consult me about it first, you know!".

"Of course not! I'm calling Clara again." Gemma hissed, looking up at Alice with a somewhat wounded expression on her face. Lilly saw Alice's chest rise and fall as she took a deep breath and sat back down, her head falling into her hands like it had suddenly become too heavy for her neck. "Jesus Christ, why is she still not picking up?" Gemma muttered, jabbing at her phone screen again, Lilly able to hear the phone ringing out from where she was sat. It seemed like some kind of a mini miracle when Clara actually picked up, Gemma immediately putting her onto loudspeaker.